The debut novel of Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, Q&A presents each of the 12 questions (neatly dealt with one at a time in the 12 chapters of the book) alongside the episode in Ram's life which explains how he knew the correct response … The events in Ram's amazing life are hard to believe. Yet, set against the colorful backdrop of modern India, they start to seem increasingly plausible while still no less extraordinary. Filled with a unique combination of humor, suspense and social commentary, Q&A is a fast-paced read which will leave you satisfyingly stunned.
These picaresque adventures take place all over India. Along with Ram's ecumenical name, they suggest that our hero is meant to be an Indian Everyman. And he acts like one: although poor and uneducated, he is resourceful and wily. The connections between Ram's tales and the quiz-show questions are clever, but Swarup's prose is flat. Still, Swarup, an Indian diplomat and first-time novelist, writes humorously and keeps the surprises coming. When it is turned into the movie it wants to be, Q & A will be a delight.
Vikas Swarup provides a strange mixture of sweet and sour in this erratically comic novel … The theme here couldn't be any more obvious if Vanna White spelled it out for us, but what Q & A lacks in subtlety it makes up for in charm and melodrama. While Ram's interrogators are torturing him, a mysterious young defense attorney bursts into the cell and demands a private interview with her client. Almost the entire novel consists of their conversation … Through murders, robberies, rapes and close scrapes, Ram speaks in a voice that turns from wide-eyed innocence to moral outrage.
The faint of heart might as well put the novel down right now and go switch on the soothing tones of Alex Trebek, because they won't be able to handle Ram's version of Jeopardy … What mars Q & A can best be described as a tonal problem. While this reader appreciated Ram's unwillingness to wallow in despair, many of the events he describes are so harrowing that the novel's brisk, even breezy, pace can seem disconcerting … But there's no denying the novel's clever conceit, or that Swarup has created a hero readers will happily cheer for.
Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup knows how to spin a yarn. In his new debut, Q & A, he tells 12 of them within the framework of a improbable quiz-show victory … Unfortunately, Swarup fails to wrap these episodes in a compelling package. His roller-coaster collection ends with the abruptness of a library storyteller rushing to reach an urgent appointment across town. The crashing denouement diminishes even the best of what has come before. It's too bad, because Swarup, a quiz-show aficionado, has gotten hold of an irresistible premise … His haste to get to the novel's final A makes it look like all the Q's were cheap setups.
A cheery picaresque in which an orphaned, ill-educated boy abandoned to hardscrabble existence in the teeming slums of Dharavi, India, wins a billion rupees on a nationally televised quiz show—and then is forced to defend himself against charges of cheating … Each quiz question prompts Ram to narrate in flashback a different chapter in his brief but adventurous life that ultimately—the reader can be absolutely sure—reveals the correct answer. Indian diplomat and first-novelist Swarup uses a heavy-handed formula to frame a high-concept retelling of good vanquishing evil in the age of reality TV. It’s too pat to be profound, but clever and fun all the same.
Rushdie's Midnight's Children may have been a model: Ram's brash yet innocent voice recalls that of Saleem Sinai, Rushdie's narrator, and the sheer number of Ram's near-death adventures represents the life of the underprivileged in India, just as Saleem wore a map of India, quite literally, on his face. But Swarup's prose is sometimes flat and the story's picaresque form turns predictable. Ram is a likable fellow, but this q&a with him, though clever, grows wearying.
